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Lobster Creamed

A creamy lobster dish made with cream, flour, butter, egg yolks, sherry, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and lobster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Creamed

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a chafing dish, heat 1 cup of cream.

  2. Rub together 1 teaspoon of flour and 2 tablespoons of butter, then stir into the hot cream.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the lobster meat, ¼ teaspoon of salt, a little cayenne, and the beaten egg yolks.

  2. Just before serving, stir in ⅓ cup of sherry.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cream + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cream
Forms the base of the sauce and gives it a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce when mixed with butter and heated.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the cream.
Lobster meat
Provides the main seafood flavor and tender texture of the dish.
Egg yolks
Enrich and further thicken the sauce as they warm, adding body and smoothness.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or scramble if the cream is at a hard boil. Keep the mixture warm rather than boiling once the yolks go in, and stir steadily so the sauce stays smooth.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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